Drying out

ELKHART, Kan. -- Warren Bowker's combine kicks up a cloud of dust as he runs it nearly full speed across his thin stands of winter wheat. The machine almost touches the parched ground as it tries to cut stunted wheat that grew only a few inches tall.

Bowker's brother, Shaun, waves him in. Moments later they stare glumly at the combine's flat tire. Shaun Bowker uses his cell phone to call a repair shop, which says someone will be out soon. After all, there isn't much business these days.

It's been nearly a year since much of western Kansas has gotten substantial rain of even up to an inch, and the southwest corner has been hardest hit.

The drought has devastated the wheat crop now being harvested and spurred widespread selling off of cattle herds, as farmers become increasingly desperate to find enough feed and water to carry them through the summer grazing season.

Rural farm economies are hurting and even the wildlife is struggling to survive. The Bowker brothers are thankful to have anything left at all to harvest.

"You feel good, but you feel bad you are one of the few cutting," Shaun Bowker says. "Everybody around is burned off."

Poor crops are the least of their worries in this drought. Before the end of the month, the Bowkers will round up their cattle out of the Cimarron National Grassland and ship them off for sale, liquidating in one day what took them 10 years to build.

"We are going to dump the whole thing. We aren't going to fight it," Warren Bowker says.

Last week, forestry officials ordered all 100 farmers with permits to graze government lands to remove their grazing cattle from the drought-stressed grass. Usually 5,000 cattle feed off the national grassland; 3,200 are on it now, and all must leave before the end of June.

"The grass and vegetation is so stressed so severely that to graze it will be detrimental," says Cimarron National Grassland district manager Joe Hartman. "If we don't take care of those plants, they could be adversely hurt."

Weather records dating back to 1913 show that never has there been less precipitation here than now. Even the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s logged more rain than this year, says Morton County Extension agent Tim Jones.

The big, black dust clouds of that era haven't repeated because much of the land has been put into the Conservation Reserve Program, a government program that pays farmers not to plant their cropland. But at times, big drifts of dirt blow across state highways so thickly that for a moment it seems like dusk. The drifting soil piles up along fence rows.

Activity at the Elkhart Co-op grain elevator -- or lack of it -- illustrates the troubles.

Manager Larry Dunn says his seven elevators usually take in 3.2 million bushels of wheat during harvest. This year they hope to collect 500,000 to 600,000 bushels. He figures 70 percent of the planted acres were abandoned long before harvest began.

"It is a downward spiraling effect," Dunn says. "It is to the point it can get easily depressing for employees who have to hear it all the time."

Insurance losses

Roughly 2,800 Kansas farmers have filed insurance claims for this year's crop, collecting $24 million so far even as losses mount with the start of the harvest, according to figures compiled by the federal Department of Agriculture's risk management agency.

Those figures only reflect claims paid, and the agency has a backlog. They don't include damage from a recent weekend hail storm that caused an estimated $6 million in damages to wheat crops.

This year's wheat crop in Kansas is insured for $645 million, and the money paid out so far is mostly for abandoned acres, says Rebecca Davis, the agency's director of the Topeka regional office.

In Washington, drought aid proposals are expected to be discussed when lawmakers later this summer begin writing food and farm spending bills for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

"We are all trying to stay optimistic, but it is kind of bleak," says Pam Pate of Ben Pate Agency in Elkhart, noting that about 75 percent of the farmers who bought insurance from the agency have already filed claims for abandoned acres.

"It will turn around and get good again," she says. "We are hoping prices will come back up. It will rain, or snow, again. We are tough out here. We survive."

Elkhart has been through droughts before. Businesses come and go, but it will be mainly farmers who are forced to quit.

"A lot of our customers have no wheat left to cut," says Tim Predmore, service manager at a John Deere farm equipment dealership.